It was a quarter to seven when Moris Klaw entered the sick room.
Ottley lay in a trance-like condition, and the eccentric investigator,
of whose proceedings the nurse strongly disapproved, settled himself
in a split-cane armchair by the bedside, and waving his hand in
dismissal to Haufmann and myself, placed a large silk handkerchief
over his sparsely covered skull and composed himself for slumber.
We left him and tiptoed from the room.
“If you hadn’t told me what he’s done in the past,” whispered
Haufmann, “I should say our old friend was mad a lot!”
The great empty house was eerily silent, and during the time that we
sat smoking and awaiting the end of Moris Klaw’s singular telepathic
experiment, neither of us talked very much. At eight o’clock the man
whose proceedings savoured so much of charlatanism, but whom I knew
for one of the foremost criminologists of the world, emerged, spraying
his face with verbena.
“Ah, gentlemen,” he said, coming in to us, “I have recovered some
slight impression”--he tapped his moist forehead--“of that agonizing
thought which preceded the unconsciousness of Ottley. I depart.
Sometime to-night will come Sir Bartram Vane from Half-Moon Street,
the specialist, to confer with the physician who is attending here.
Mr. Searles, remain concealed. Not even he must know of your being
here; no one outside the house must know. Remember my warnings. I
depart.”
Behind the thick pebbles his eyes gleamed with some excitement
repressed. By singular means, he would seem to have come upon a clue.
“Good-night, Mr. Haufmann,” he said. “Good-night, Mr. Searles. To the
nurse I have said good-night and she only glared. She thinks I am the
mad old fool!”
He departed, curtly declining company, and carrying his huge plaid rug
and heavy grip. As his slouching footsteps died away along the avenue,
Haufmann and I looked grimly at each other.
“Seems we’re left!” said my friend. “You won’t desert me, Searles?”
“Most certainly I shall not! You are tied here by the presence of poor
Ottley, in any event, and you can rely upon me to keep you company.”
At about ten o’clock Sir Bartram Vane drove up, bringing with him the
local physician who was attending upon Ottley. I kept well out of
sight, but learnt, when the medical men had left, that the course of
treatment had been entirely changed.
Thus commenced our strange ordeal; how it terminated you presently
shall learn.
Moris Klaw, in pursuit of whatever plan he had formed, never appeared
on the scene, but evidence of his active interest reached us in the
form of telegraphic instructions. Once it was a wire telling Haufmann
to detain the American servants in London should they arrive and to go
on living as we were. Again it was a warning not to go out on the
balcony after dusk; and, again, that we should not desert our posts
for one single evening. On the fourth day the doctor pronounced a
slight improvement in Ottley’s condition, and Haufmann determined to
run down to Brighton on the following morning, returning in the
afternoon.
That night we again heard the voice.
The house was very still, and Haufmann and I had retired to our rooms,
when I discerned, above the subdued rustling whisper of the leaves,
that other sound that no leaf ever made. In an instant I was crouching
by the open window. A lull followed. Then, again, I heard the soft
voice calling. I could not detect the words, but in obedience to the
instructions of Klaw, I picked up the pistol which I had brought for
the purpose, and ran to the door. The idea that the whispering menace
was something that could be successfully shot at robbed it of much of
its eerie horror, and I relished the prospect of action after the
dreary secret sojourn in the upper rooms of the house.
I groped my way down to the hall. As we had carefully oiled the bolts,
I experienced no difficulty in silently opening the door. Inch by inch
I opened it, listening intently.
Again I heard the queer call.
Now, by craning my neck, I could see the moon-bright front of the
house; and looking upward, I was horrified to see Shan Haufmann, a
conspicuous figure in his light pajama suit, crouching on the balcony!
The moonlight played vividly on the nickelled barrel of the pistol he
carried as he rose slowly to his feet.
Though I did not know what danger threatened, nor from whence it would
proceed, I knew well that Klaw’s was no idle warning. I could not
imagine what madness had prompted Haufmann to neglect it, and was
about to throw wide the door and call to him, when a series of strange
things happened in bewildering succession.
An odd _strumming_ sound came from somewhere in the outer darkness.
Haufmann dropped to his knees (I learnt, afterward, that the loose
slippers he wore had tripped him). The glass of the window behind him
was shattered with a great deal of noise.
A shot!… a spurt of flame in the black darkness of the poplar avenue!…
a shriek from somewhere on the west front… and I ran out on to the
drive.
With a tremendous crash a bulky form rolled down the sloping roof of
the coach house, to fall with a sickening thud to the ground!
Then, out into the moonlight, Moris Klaw came running, his yet smoking
pistol in his hand!
“Haufmann!” he cried, and again, “Haufmann!”
The big American peered down from the balcony, hauling in something
which seemed to be a line, but which I was unable to distinguish in
the darkness.
“Good boy!” he panted. “I was a fool to do it! But I saw him lying
behind the chimney and thought I could drop him!”
Moris Klaw ran, ungainly, across to the coach house and I followed
him. The figure of a tall, lithe man, wearing a blue serge suit, lay
face downward on the gravel. As we turned him over, Haufmann,
breathing heavily, joined us. The moonlight fell on a dark saturnine
face.
“Gee!” came the cry. “It’s _Corpus Chris!_”
V
“Where did I get hold upon the clue?” asked Moris Klaw, when he,
Haufmann, and I sat, in the gray dawn, waiting for the police to come
and take away the body of Costa. “It was from the brain of Ottley! His
poor mind”--he waved long hands circularly in the air--“goes round and
round about the thing that happened to him on the balcony.”
“And what was that?” demanded Haufmann, eagerly. “Same as happened to
me?”
“It was something--something that his knowledge of strange things
tells him is venomous--which struck his wrist as he raised his
revolver! What did he do? I can tell you; because he is doing it over
and over again in his poor feverish mind. He clapped to the injured
wrist the barrel of his revolver and fired! Then, swooning, he toppled
over and fell among the bushes. The wound that so had puzzled all
becomes explained. It was self-inflicted--a precaution--a cauterizing;
and it saved his life. For I saw Sir Bartram Vane to-day and he had
spoken with the other doctor on the telephone. The new treatment
succeeds.”
“I am still in the dark!” confessed Haufmann.
“Yes?” rumbled Moris Klaw. “So? Why do I go to Brighton? I go to ask
Miss Greta what Ottley would have asked her.”
“And that is?”
“What she feared that made her so very anxious to get you away from
your home. To me she admitted that she had received from the man Costa
impassioned appeals, such as, foolish girl, she had been afraid to
show to you--her father!”
“Good heavens! the scamp!”
“The _canaille!_ But no matter, he is dead _canaille!_ After you got
the brother hanged, this Corpus Chris (it was Fate that named him!)
sent to your daughter a mad letter, swearing that if she does not fly
with him, he will kill you if he has to follow you around the world!
Yes, he was insane, I fancy; I think so. But he was a man of very
great culture. He held a Cambridge degree! You did not know? I thought
not. He tracked you to Europe and right to this house. Its history he
learned in some way and used for his own ends. Probably, too, he had
no opportunity of getting at you otherwise, without leaving behind a
clue or being seen and pursued.”
Moris Klaw picked up an Indian bow which lay upon the floor beside
him.
“A bow of the Sioux pattern,” he rumbled, impressively.
He stooped again, picking up a small arrow to which a length of thin
black twine was attached.
“One standing on the balcony in the moonlight,” he continued, “what a
certain mark if the wind be not too high! And you will remember that
on gently blowing nights the whispering came!”
He raised the point of the arrow. It was encrusted in some black,
shining substance. Moris Klaw lowered his voice.
“_Curari!_” he said, hoarsely, “the ancient arrow poison of the South
American tribes! This small arrow would make only a tiny wound, and it
could be drawn back again by means of the twine attached. Costa, of
course, mistook Ottley for you, Mr. Haufmann. Ah, a clever fellow! I
spent three evenings up the second tree in the avenue waiting for him.
I need not have shot him if you had followed my instructions and not
come out on the balcony. We could have captured him alive!”
“I’m not crying about it!” said Haufmann.
“Neither do I weep,” rumbled Moris Klaw, and bathed his face with
perfume. “But I loathe it, this _curari_--it smells of death. Ah! the
_canaille!_”
SEVENTH EPISODE.
CASE OF THE CHORD IN G
I
It has been suggested to me more than once that the extraordinary
crime which became known throughout the press as the Chelsea studio
murder was the Waterloo of my eccentric friend, Moris Klaw; to which I
reply that, on the contrary, it was his Austerlitz. This prince of
criminologists, some of whose triumphs it has been my privilege to
chronicle, never more dramatically established his theory of what he
termed “Odic negatives” than in his solution of the mystery of the
death of Pyke Webley, the portrait painter.
His singular power, which I can only term post-telepathy, of
recovering thought-forms from the atmosphere, earned him the derision
of the ignorant, as I have shown, but the grateful appreciation of the
better informed--not least among these, Detective-Inspector Grimsby,
of New Scotland Yard.
I cannot doubt that the recent experiments of Professor Gilbert Murray
were based upon that law of “psychic angles” laid down by the strange
genius of Wapping Old Stairs.
During lunch, I had been reading an account of the Chelsea tragedy in
an early edition of the _Evening Standard_, and on returning to my
chambers I found Inspector Grimsby waiting for me. A preamble was
unnecessary. Simple deduction told me why he had come.
He was in charge of the Chelsea mystery--and out of his depth.
By several years the youngest detective inspector in the Service,
Grimsby is a man earmarked by nature for constant promotion. He
possesses a gift more precious than genius--the art of _using_ genius;
allied to which he has that knack indispensable to any man who would
succeed--the knack of finding the limelight. Although he may have done
no more than stand in the wings throughout the performance,
Detective-Inspector Grimsby invariably takes the last curtain.
This is as it should be, and I accord him my respectful admiration.
Therefore, on seeing him:
“The murder of Pyke Webley?” I said, interrogatively.
“Well, that’s wonderful!” he declared, trying to look surprised. “I
shall begin to think you are Moris Klaw’s only rival if you spring
things like this on me.”
“I see,” said I, tossing my paper on the table. “The case is not so
simple as it appears.”
“Simple!” cried Grimsby. He threw the stump of a vicious-looking
cheroot into my hearth. “Simple? It’s _too_ simple. By which I mean
that there is nothing to work upon--nothing _I_ can see.”
He stood, his back to the hearth, looking at me appealingly; and:
“Have you ’phoned to Wapping?” I asked.
Grimsby nodded.
“I could get no reply,” he answered gloomily.
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Well”--he hesitated--“I know your time is of value, Mr. Searles, but
I was wondering--I have a taxi outside--if you had time to run down to
Moris Klaw’s place with me for a chat?”
“Why not go alone?”
“Ah!” He selected a fresh cheroot and made it crackle between finger
and thumb. “His daughter is the snag. She thinks I waste his time. I
doubt if she’d let me see him.”
“Your own fault,” I said. “She’s a charming girl. You don’t handle her
properly.”
“Ah!” he repeated, and became silent, fumbling for matches. Finally,
taking pity upon him:
“Very well,” I agreed, “I have a couple of hours to spare, and if Klaw
takes up the case my time will not be wasted.”